


can we just talk about it?

by pastisregret



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Comfort, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Late Night Conversations, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining, being there for each other, semi-friends to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-30 19:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastisregret/pseuds/pastisregret
Summary: marinette's begun to get nightmares. chloé's there to help out.





	can we just talk about it?

**Author's Note:**

> this... now this is that good shit

Marinette knew the nightmares needed to stop.

She couldn’t tell when they first started, or how long they had been going for, but had reached the point where there needed to be an intervention of sorts, a way of opening her head and figuring out just what was going on inside. There were enough troubles in her daily life a life which only seemed to grow more and more chaotic as the days went by and responsibilities grew. Stress from each hobby and duty she had stacked up, overpowering her with no struggle.

Stress, which found its perfect method of attack when Marinette was most vulnerable.

What seemed to surround her during the day increased at tenfold at night, leaving her struggling for air and jolting upwards in bed. Usually, it was residue from akumas, enough almost hits and near-death experiences that Marinette felt she had experienced more than a lifetime’s worth of pain.

She dreamt of other things too, at times. She would see her friends injured, with nothing Marinette could do but watch and cry out. She saw her family, taken hostage by Hawkmoth and setting in fear with each akuma attack that arose. She would see Chat, the guilt felt by his constant sacrifices overwhelming her.

She’d see herself, unable to fix everything in the end.

More often than not, however, it was one person in particular who showed up, leaving her stricken with fear. Adrien, creeping up on her in the same horrific way he had been when Sandboy attacked. It was terrifying, a drastic switch from the person she knew in real life. A person who joined another reason she felt unease at closing her eyes at night.

It had been hard to handle, to say the least. She had spent so long shouldering it all on her own, and now, faced with the prospect of opening up, Marinette felt no one she could outright talk to without feeling like a burden. No, if she wanted to voice her thoughts to someone, she’d need to choose the right person. Someone who she wouldn’t feel hesitation towards, who would understand and not hold back all in one.

So, Marinette chose Chloé.

“Nightmares?”

“Pretty much,” Marinette said, moving around the foam on her coffee with her spoon. “I… I can’t really explain most of them, but I just need someone to help me out, to make it easier when I have them.”

“And I’m the perfect fit for that?” she asked, raising her cappuccino and leaving a lipstick imprint on her cup as she drank. “Out of everyone in your little circle, I’m the one you go to?”

“You’re honest, Chloé. You’re maybe the only person I know who wouldn’t try to butter me up, or pretend everything would get better. You never hold back, even if it means hurting someone’s feelings.”

Chloé raised a brow, staring down Marinette. “And that’s a good thing?”

“When it comes to everyone acting like it’s a crime to be realistic, yes,” Marinette said in response. Setting down her spoon, she looked at Chloé, a person she had expected not to show up just a half hour ago. A person who had made the past few years of her life a living hell, a hell she had only recently gotten out of. Chloé, who had so often been the reason behind so many akumas and a reason for her own near-akumization so long ago.

Could she really divulge so much onto someone like her?

In another second, Marinette bit her lip, already doubling back on her own doubts. She had no other choice, no other person who fit the mold as well as she did. Bringing both elbows to dig into the table, Marinette leaned in, closing the distance as much as she could.

“So, will you do it?” she asked, trying to maintain eye contact as long she could.

Chloé looked away before the gaze had any effect. With her thumb, she began to wipe away at her lipstick mark, smudging it as she replied, “I’ll think about it, Dupain-Cheng.”

Grabbing her bag, Chloé left, leaving Marinette alone.

It was sometime after midnight when she wakes up, darkness all around her and Paris fast asleep. It’s not a nightmare though, but the buzzing from her phone that was the cause, a buzzing that seems to grow stronger with each second. Her hand fumbling, Marinette answered the call before her eyes had even opened, pressing the phone up to the side of her face.

“Hello?” she mutters out, hoping her voice didn’t wake up Tikki.

“Don’t tell me you’re already asleep, Dupain-Cheng.”

She’d recognize that voice anywhere.

“Why are you calling so late?” Marinette asks, a hand coming to rub at her eyes in an attempt to wake herself up more.

“You want help, right?”

“Yes, but- “

“Then talk to me.”

Marinette blinks. “Talk… to you?”

“That’s what I said, right?”

“Well, I- “

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” Chloé cuts in. “Just talk about the first thing that comes to mind, and we’ll work from there until you fall asleep.”

“We’ll? Does that mean that you’ve…?”

“Yes,” Chloé answers before Marinette finishes her thought. “I thought about it, and it was the least I could do. I am a superhero, after all, and what use would it be to be so charismatic in the suit if I wasn’t outside?”

“Right,” Marinette says, voice dropping into a sarcastic tone she doesn’t have the energy to conceal. “Of course.”

“Don’t make me hang up on you. I don’t _have_ to do this, remember?”

“I know,” Marinette replies. Another moment, and she breathes out something else, a mere whisper into the night. “Thank you. For this, I mean.”

“You’re gonna make me puke,” Chloé responds with. “Just start talking, Dupain-Cheng. Tonight, preferably.”

“Okay.” Letting out a sigh, she shifted her body around, now laying down on her back. Looking up, Marinette trained her eyes on the balcony hatch, noticing the way it lit up with moonlight.

“It’s a pretty night, right?”

\--

They had gone into a routine pretty soon after that. Whenever Marinette woke up in the night, struggling for a grasp on reality, Chloé would be there, only one phone call away. She would stay on the other end, silent for as long as she needed to while Marinette told her what had been haunting her in her dreams – or what she could share, trying to conceal her identity as best as she could. In the morning she’d send a quick text thanking her, and be left on read until Chloé would eventually respond back with some witty comeback, her way of being polite.

Marinette would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy it. There was a new level between the two, a connection that would have never gotten as close to only a few years prior. They’d arrange for late-night calls whenever Marinette felt the sense she’d wake up frightened, and on more than one occasion Chloé had invited her to eat, brunches and lunches that took up the better part of her days. Marinette would stay up late sketching if she could, telling Chloé to describe her dream outfits and drawing them out, sometimes going so far as to doodle a quick sketch of Chloé’s face. There was a new layer of intimacy between the two, the sort that only grew from late nights talking under the cover of darkness.

The covers of darkness that no longer held the same energy as before. Marinette found herself rising up from her bed less often in the middle of the night with a scream caught in her throat, found herself waking up in the morning with no disruptions. She found herself stepping back into the familiarity of before, where it made sense to be happy to close her eyes at night. Where there had been fear, suddenly shifted into something better.

And then, it changed.

“I had a bad dream,” she speaks into her phone one night, rolled onto her side and watching Tikki sleep. On the other end, Marinette can hear Chloé snort.

“Oh? _That’s_ surprising.”

“Don’t be mean. You know what I meant.”

“Just trying to brighten your night,” she responds. When Chloé speaks again, her voice is softer, kinder. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t,” Marinette says.

Marinette can hear the sound of her moving around on the other end, probably getting comfortable. “I’m all ears.”

Darting her eyes away from Tikki, Marinette tries to gain the courage to speak, to voice the thoughts running through her head, the mental image that had been terrorizing her not a half-hour sooner.

“You know how I sometimes… have those dreams?” she starts, hesitating. “About… about Adrien?”

“You don’t have be vague just because we’re friends now, Mari,” Chloé responds, voice so snarky Marinette can just picture the way she rolls her eyes as she continues. “I get it; the worst thought that runs through your mind is that Adrien falls in love with me, we run off into the sunset, and steal away your happily ever after.”

Marinette blinks. “I… I didn’t think you remembered it so well.”

“Of _course,_ I do. How could I forget something like that? Honestly, sometimes I wonder if-” Chloé sighs, stopping herself before she went on for too long. “Continue.”

“Something like that happened again.” Marinette bites her lip, wondering if the beating of her heart would go down any time soon. “Another one… of those dreams.”

“And what’s so different now?”

“It wasn’t with Adrien.”

Chloé goes quiet, nothing but the sound of her breathing coming out from the other end.

“If not him…” she begins to ask, the usual snark in her voice gone, “then who?”

Marinette exhales in time with her confession, sending out both in one motion. “You.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why would I be?”

“This…” Chloé falters. “There’s no way.”

“Would I be calling you right now if it wasn’t?”

“Why _me_?”

“You think I _want_ this to happen?” Marinette asks, sitting up in her bed and holding tightly to her phone, whispering harshly as she spoke. “To close my eyes and see you in front of me? To have to hear you going on about how you want to date Adrien, and- “

“Hold on,” Chloé interrupts, stopping before she went off on a tangent. “You think I want to date _Adrien_?”

“You’ve always said you liked him.”

“Yeah, when I was, like, _fourteen_,” Chloé scoffs. “Come on, do you think really think he’s the person on my mind right now?”

“Who is?”

Silence passes over the two, hauntingly potent in the dark.

“Goodnight,” Chloé says.

“But- “

“Goodnight, Dupain-Cheng. Call me when you _really_ have a nightmare going on, because I can assure you not one thing in your stupid dream holds up right now.”

She hangs up before Marinette can get another word in, leaving her to lay back down in her bed and think, alone in the night.

\--

The next time, it’s Chloé calling, a few days after the fiasco of a late-night phone call. Marinette picks up on the first ring, unable to sleep without the thought of another nightmare flashing through her mind. Sitting downstairs on her chaise, Marinette had her sketchbook out, shading in the details for her latest drawing.

“What’s up?” she greets, pencil gently tracing over a lightly drawn line. “Finally want to tell me about- “

“I had a nightmare,” Chloé says, cutting her off.

“Oh.” Marinette stops her pencil, leaning back into the chaise. A hand comes up to fiddle with a strand of hair, twirling it around her finger. “Do you want to- “

“Tomorrow. Café de Flore. Be there.”

Marinette writes down the details before she can forget, too used to the last-minute hangouts Chloé would spring upon her from time to time. “What time?”

“Noon.”

Chloé hangs up before Marinette can ask anything else. With a sigh, she stared at the words she had written down, a reminder to herself she was sure she wouldn’t forget.

She looked down at the picture she had drawn too, of a girl she couldn’t get out of her mind even as she slept. 

\--

Café de Flore was never a place Marinette was going to get used to, no matter how many times she walked in and found a spot hidden away from the tourists, or found herself seated across Chloé, staring down at a menu with items far too expensive to be worth the meal.

She found this to be truer than ever before now, as Marinette looked over at Chloé and caught her reading over the specials of the day, manicured hands holding onto the menu with a tight grip. She had yet to utter so much as a hello her way, and even now hadn’t glanced over, hadn’t said anything after last night’s call.

It drove Marinette crazy. Her nerves spiking up, she thought back to not just last night’s call, but the call she had made herself only a few days ago, where she had told Chloé just what had begun to trail after her in the corners of darkness, and the very clear interpretation behind those dreams.

There was no doubt about it, even as she sat there. With the butterflies going around her stomach, and the way her mouth was beginning to run dry, Marinette could tell there was something in the air, something that had begun to emerge without warning. A sudden affection towards Chloé, a fondness towards her that didn’t make any sense at first.

_At first, of course._ With time to think and muse about it, Marinette realized more and more there was suddenly all too much that lined up, clues that circled around her. Clues that begun to turn into signs she should’ve noticed from the start, when she decided there was no one more perfect to turn to than Chloé.

With a jolt, Marinette notices Chloé has turned her gaze on her, watching intently.

“Why did you tell me to come?” Marinette manages to ask, surprised her voice was stable enough to keep calm even while they maintained eye contact.

“It seemed better to talk about this in person,” she answers, eyes dancing off to look at the table, if only for a second. “I don’t really like talking over the phone.”

Marinette frowns, brows furrowing together. “But- “

“I like talking to you,” Chloé says, before Marinette can interject.

Blinking, her face softens. “You like talking to me?”

“I do.”

“Is that what you wanted to say?”

“No. Well, yes, in a way. There’s a lot I want to say, actually,” Chloé says, frowning at the way she worded her answer.

Marinette smiles, watching the way Chloé looked somewhat flustered. “I have time,” she says, voice going soft as she spoke.

Chloé placed both her hands on each side of the table, as if supporting her as she spoke. “The dream I had last night,” she starts, “the one I called you about.”

Marinette nods.

“It was just like one of those dreams you have. With Adrien.” Another breath, and Chloé continues. “And me, that one time.”

“Really?” Marinette asks, even while her cheeks turned pink at the memory of her dream’s latest addition, of blonde hair and blue eyes and a smirk she had known all too well.

“They’ve been happening for a while,” Chloé admits, continuing. “I didn’t know what to make of them, and just thought it was an effect of having to hear you go on and on about it all those nights. But it wasn’t Adrien I kept seeing over and over in my head. It was _you_, going on about the plans you and Adrien made together. Or about how you were in love with him, and no one else.”

“That’s why you knew it so well,” Marinette says, almost a whisper.

“It’s practically memorized at this point,” Chloé tells her. “I had no clue what they really meant… until you called me the other night.”

“And what does it mean?” Marinette asks, even while her heart picks up pace.

“I think you know what it means, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Please. Let me hear you say it.”

Chloé sighs, a smile growing even as she does so. “It means… I like you, Marinette.”

“Do you really?”

“What other ways do you have of proving it?” Chloé asks, raising her brow as if to challenge her. Marinette’s eyes flicker down, just for a moment before she can form the proper words to land on an area lower on Chloé’s face, a place she had often glanced at before darting her gaze away.

It’s no use though. Chloé’s already seen. “You know,” she says, “if you just wanted a kiss, you could’ve just told me.”

Marinette turns her head, cheeks beginning to turn red.

“Well?” Chloé asks. “Are you going to ask?”

“Can I really?”

“I’m not turning you away right now, am I?”

“Well then… can I have a kiss, Chloé?” Marinette asks, turning her head to watch and wait for Chloé’s reaction.

She answers without words. Leaning over the table, they both meet each other halfway, for a shared kiss, one that seems shorter than it is as they pull away. Marinette begins to lean in once more for another, but Chloé stops her, finger pressed to her lips.

“I’m sure Café de Flore won’t be pleased if all their tourists get to see is two Parisians sharing kisses in their café.”

Marinette giggles, lips brushing against Chloé’s finger as she speaks, “We can just tell them we’re saying hello.”

“And then how will you explain our goodbye?”

“Like this.” Pushing herself up, Marinette closes the distance between the two, a hand coming to pull down Chloé’s hand and to find her lips once more.

This time, Chloé doesn’t stop her. No, this was a dream she’d rather not wake up from, so long as she could help it.

**Author's Note:**

> mari-cheres on tumblr!


End file.
